Scammers pretend to be famous to take money from their fans on TikTok

With more than 1 billion users and strong growth in recent years, TikTok has become the scene of lucrative scams in which anonymous netizens pose as celebrities and collect thousands of dollars in gifts and donations from their most unsuspecting fans.

This is a relatively simple scam to execute: the scammer takes a live video made by a celebrity, either on TikTok or on other portals such as Instagram, and reproduces it on his own channel in which he pretends to be that person and asks his followers for donations.

“They are very ingenious and very skilled,” said the cybersecurity expert Satnam Narang, who works as a security engineer for the firm Tenable and is responsible for the investigation that has unmasked these types of scams, in an interview with Efe.

Gifts are exchanged for real money

The way scammers turn their deception into a lucrative activity is by asking their victims to send them virtual gifts, which they can then exchange for real money following TikTok policy.

That the artists and celebrities of TikTok ask their followers for virtual gifts is quite common, and in return they offer them privileged access such as a private conversation or participate live in the video that is being broadcast.

“The best example I can think of is a TikTok scammer posing as the singer. Billie Eilish Through a video stolen from Instagram and many people sent her gifts to invite them to appear with her live. Of course, no one was elected, ”says Narang.

These types of scams, which the Tenable researcher has been following since April this year, have basically two groups of victims.

In the first place, the users who pay these virtual gifts with real money and not only do not receive anything in return, but they are also sent to a person other than the one they believe.

On the other hand, the artists and celebrities themselves are also victims, who see how their identity is supplanted and taken advantage of so that third parties can profit on their behalf without them receiving a single cent.

Billie Eilish, “The Rock” and Charli D’Amelio, among the victims

In addition to Eilish, Narang also identified actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and influencer Charli D’Amelio as other prominent victims of this scam, along with thousands of other lower-profile content creators.

Scammers also use stolen videos and the attention they generate to promote products of questionable origin and links to adult dating websites, two other sources of income derived from posing as someone they are not.

The main stumbling block that scammers must overcome is that TikTok does not allow live video streaming unless you have 1,000 or more followers.

Give pity with animal videos

Narang has identified the strategy that they follow to achieve that goal: the publication of videos of animals with some deficiency or that have suffered abuse, that directly appeal to the emotion of the viewer and that go viral very easily.

“For me this is what makes it even more disgusting: they use videos of these poor animals to gain followers and, once they reach 1,000, scam those same followers,” lamented the researcher.

To avoid being a victim of such a scam, it is advised if the user has the name of the star they claim to be, if the account is verified by TikTok, if they have more published videos (an account without videos is a sign of a possible scam) and if the video is being broadcast in good quality.